


The Three Lives of Laura Victoriano

by lovelysalome



Category: The Evil Within (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Headcanon, Implied/Referenced Incest, Trauma, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-07 21:32:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17968451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovelysalome/pseuds/lovelysalome
Summary: She had to maintain control and not dwell on memories.If she looked back, even once, she’d be lost.Warning: Briefly mentioned unrequited incestuous feelings taken from the Kidman DLC. No abuse/acting on the feelings occurs.





	The Three Lives of Laura Victoriano

i.

Her world was always fire.

Fire and bullets, to be exact. The bullets came later. First, there was the barn and the sunflowers that seemed endless. She and her brother would run in the flowers, chasing butterflies, and she had always admired the yellow petals. That yellow, the gold of a maiden’s hair in the storybooks Father gave her, the ones she’d thumb through during storms with Ruben by her side. The yellow of the flowers and the white of the lightning always contrasted starkly with her black hair and red dresses.

Maidens always had pretty names. It wasn’t that “Laura” wasn’t pretty and didn’t have its own power. But—it didn’t feel like her. She was drifting, dust doing its lazy pendulum in the light of the cold study window. Caking the mirrors.

In the mirror, she always saw herself at a slant. This wasn’t who she wanted to be. But she loved Father and Mother and Ruben, and that meant making them happy with Laura: her smiles, her dresses, her long, black hair. The darling daughter and sister.

Beautiful, darling, dead.

She didn’t remember much after the barn fire. She was supposed to be dead, and her world was a flowering of orange and scarlet agony. Her last memory had been Ruben’s tear-stained face, how soft yet hard the grassy earth had been when she fell backwards.

Always reaching for the light, a cracked reflection of herself. She was burned, a burned page. A tragedy for her parents and Ruben to pine over, if Ruben had lived, but he had to. Her dreams, as the heart monitor keened, were dark. She was in water, running, but no matter what, she still burned.

Then, one day, she woke up, wounded but healing across her arms, legs, and chest. No bandages anymore. Her hair was matted. No one was watching over her. She had to be dead, and this was a dream.

And Laura walked out. She suspected she’d be looked for, wasn’t exactly sure why she just walked off. In a train station bathroom, she found a pair of scissors at the bottom of a grimy stall. First chance she had, she cut her hair, feeling so much lighter. Outside, a woman, looking concerned at the scarred and trembling girl whose legs had narrowly missed atrophy, gave her a coat and half a peanut butter sandwich.

All she wanted was Ruben, then. She was the older sister, and yet she wanted him there so she’d feel safe again. Even her silky bedsheets, the tickling of ants on her elbow as they lounged about in the sun—everything, she’d taken it for granted.

Without any way to really calculate time, Laura couldn’t say how long she was without a home.

She found herself in an entirely new place, a city, Krimson City. She had no place to go, no sense of the outside world. So she slept in benches at the park, normally on ones shaded by trees, as if they’d hide her from prowling eyes or the lengthening shadows. Her shoulders tensed and jaw tightened—throat closing up—with every police siren.

Then one day she was hungry, and unable to wait for the charity of others, she saw a tall woman with hair the color of cornsilk—of sunflowers at one angle, and barn hay in another. She was wearing a long white coat and going at a fervent pace, mind on something else. Ducking behind the woman, and seeing her wallet sticking out, Laura tried to sneak up on her and grab it. Tried, but the woman whipped around, blue eyes shrewd.

A hand was on her wrist, and she tensed, waiting to be struck.

Then she saw the badge and knew she’d be in trouble. She’d have shelter and food, but maybe she’d be stuck there forever. Maybe . . .

Instead, she ended up in a café with coffee and a bagel she ate in less than a minute.

She should’ve said she had a family. It was selfish to disappear and let her family worry or grieve. They had to be looking for her. Where she was from, there had to be people looking. Then again, she had seen many “Missing” posters just on the park street lamps alone, cluttered like the stamps on Father’s envelopes. Her face hadn’t shown up, yet.

_I need to go back. They need me. Ruben . . ._

The way Ruben looked at her and touched her hair had made her ears burn and throat tighten in . . .

Embarrassment and—fear?

If she went back, he’d hold her even closer, and his fixation—she’d like to think he respected her boundaries, that he’d never think of his own sister in _that way_. That he wouldn’t obsess more once she returned.

 _Perfect,_ he had called her. _I can’t live without you._

Her parents—she couldn’t say anything for fear of shaming Ruben. Either Mother and Father would take her claims seriously, or they wouldn’t and dismiss her, blame her for spinning cruel stories about her little brother. Ruben was so gentle, just as fragile as her. Sickly, at times, or "of dubious constitution." How dare she accuse him of indecent thoughts? As if one’s thoughts could be read, and they could be punished for it.

She was asked for her age, and she asked for the date. Six months had passed since the accident. It almost made her cry. To think her family had dealt with her birthday without her . . .

She was eighteen, had turned it sometime in her impromptu exile.

She was asked for her name.

She gave it.

***

ii.

It wasn’t exactly that, after the barn accident, she forgot her past. After all, she wouldn’t remember the barn fire and her fall if she did. 

Her family. Maybe they thought she was dead, or someone would say she was dead because it was a better lie than thinking she was alive out there, somewhere. Besides, she’d always been fragile. It might’ve been that she lived in a place that was rotting from the inside. Everything had smelled of dust and mildew.

Most of all, she missed Mother. Out of all the losses, she hadn’t expected that one to hit the most. When she was in her other life, she had taken Mother’s love for granted because it was always as present as the scent of her sweet-but-sharp perfume.

She couldn’t get rid of the pieces of her past; she had Mother’s blue eyes, and her hair—well, her entire family had that dark, dark hair. She started to dye it blonde, which was a pain. 

The Hansons were well-to-do, though not as wealthy as Mother and Father had been. Like Mother and Father, their savings were comprised of a family fortune, but they chose to live in a relatively modest suburban home. They did pay out-of-pocket for the bills of her extensive reconstructive surgery. It didn’t exactly heal everything, and she spent most of her days recovering in bed and wearing long-sleeved shirts and dresses in public.

As she sat alone in her room studying for her GED, she wasn’t exactly friendly; living in a manor with only her family and a maid wasn’t a robust exposure to humanity. She tried, and her parents tried in all the imperfect ways they connected.

Sunflowers. Butterflies and sewing back the arms of the dolls Mother gave her—were they in a closet now, gathering dust and unwanted memories? To pass the time, she learned how to make dolls. Mother would be proud.

Every time she swallowed her guilt, it stuck in her throat. Maybe without her, her brother would find his place in the world and grow beyond looking at the world as _them_. He'd learn to brave storms alone.

She had dreams of being found. Nightmares where she was twice, thrice, four times herself, a writhing mass of limbs and teeth.

Her adoptive parents were Janet and Chris, who she couldn’t quite bring to call Mom and Dad, though they were wonderful and patient. When she’d wake up screaming, one of them would be there, and they’d let her cling to them as she pretended in her head that they were Mother. But they both had sharp, crisp smells to them without an overpowering sweetness, and they wouldn’t say much, if anything. They wouldn’t hum and sing, but it was almost enough. They tried.

Often, because they worked on the force, when they were able to be there, they were too tired to say much. But they cared enough to stay with her. They should’ve asked more about her past, the scars she needed surgery for. And they did. A fire, she said. A barn she’d been taking shelter in. When they pressed for more, that was when she closed up. No doubt it was frustrating; they lived their lives solving mysteries, and here they were raising one. Insomuch as an adult woman sheltered from the world all her life could be raised after being adopted because she attempted petty robbery and failed.

She had to maintain control and not dwell on memories.

If she looked back, even once, she’d be lost.

_(but it was all she could do)_

***

As the adoptive daughter of two officers, she was trained how to shoot. Janet and Chris were all about her protecting herself. Krimson City was a nice place of mostly Spanish immigrants and families that had been there for decades. But still, things happened. There had been a rash of arsons in the area, though they did their best to keep any newspapers away. Their adoptive daughter didn’t like anything involving fire, and her reactions ranged from catatonia to sudden rage. She was nineteen with no set path; Janet and Chris were set to retire soon, and she hated to think she’d have no purpose and burden them. In her old life, she spent most of her time in her room, or with Ruben.

She had no plans beyond that. No fairy tale dreams, no falling in love. They were as gone as the barn surrounded by sunflowers.

On her twentieth birthday, as she seriously considered the path of her life, Chris came into her simple room. The brown skin around his dark eyes was lightly crinkled.

He handed her a wrapped box. “Happy birthday.”

She had thought it’d be a doll.

It was a gun.

That night when she slept, she had a quiet nightmare. A bullet, she dreamed one had entered right above her heart.

In truth, years later, it entered the side of her neck, and all her nerves came alive. Everything that she was tried to claw out from her ribs.

And her partner was there, by her side. He should’ve left her there, but he was panicking, hooking his arms under her knees and shoulders, running.

Even near death, her heart was alive and burning again.

***

iii.

She wasn’t herself anymore, what, wait, when did she lose herself?

Her, Lily.

Her Lily.

_I trusted him._

Trusted Sebastian to help her, come after her (even when she didn’t want him to be a part of this). 

Trusted Theodore to help her (and he betrayed her).

__She’d had a third of a cat’s life. Three, but she wasn’t herself, but . . ._ _

__As the psychoplasm covered her eyes, she saw herself in her white cloak, but it wasn’t her. It was him._ _

_Laura . . ._

__She thought of home, but there was no word for it, no word but fire._ _

_g o n e_

__And when she wrapped her daughter, her girl, her artistic little girl, in her arms, she could only hear one word, a word that warmed her in a place she thought she'd lost._ _

__“Myra?”_ _

**Author's Note:**

> This is taken from a fan theory I've seen on Tumblr about Myra and Laura being the same person.


End file.
